With the U.S. coal industry reeling from a series of mining disasters, many business and government leaders are seeking ways to mitigate the costs—economic, environmental, social and human—of electricity from coal. Among the most high-profile approaches for addressing at least some of these costs lies in carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).

However, according to a recent report from Pike Research, CCS faces a number of challenges including uncertainty about the costs of technology, the lack of a pipeline network to transport CO2 to geological storage sites and, most notably, the absence of a price on carbon emissions.

“There will be an extensive, expanding CCS industry in place by the early 2020s,” says managing director Clint Wheelock. “How large and how vibrant that industry will be depends on how CCS is prioritized by corporations and governments over the next decade.”

The addition of CCS systems to power plants will likely add between 50 and 70 percent to the cost of producing electricity. To date, no commercial-scale integrated power plant with CCS exists. The intensive short-term financing, radical policy shifts and R&D advances that would be required for multiple deployments of CCS in the next five years, Pike Research believes, appear unlikely.

Nevertheless, the forces behind CCS projects are strong, and growth is likely to be significant in the longer term. By 2020, according to the report, global revenues for CCS systems could surpass $1 billion annually under a moderate forecast scenario. In a more aggressive scenario that includes a strong push for CCS by government and industry, that figure could be as high as $42 billion in the same timeframe.

An executive summary of Pike Research’s report, “Carbon Capture and Sequestration,”is available for free download at

www.pikeresearch.com.